


when the sun hits

by nascar



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, Making Out, Small Towns, generous catcher in the rye references, ghost! hyuck, in a bathtub!, marks family runs a funeral parlor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28394235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nascar/pseuds/nascar
Summary: It’s hard to see Donghyuck almost, but he’s there anyhow, soppy uniform and everything. They don’t really talk much but stand shoulder to shoulder in front of that gravestone Donghyuck's always kneeling at.Mark kind of wants to talk, to ask who it belonged to but there’s this invisible hand around his throat. Probably inhaled too much cemetery fog, real permanent stuff.But when he looks over at Donghyuck the other boy is already looking right back. He looks a little like those kicked puppies in animal shelter advertisements and it makes Mark want to stop being such a pussy and reach out and touch him. He blinks and Donghyuck gets sorta closer. It makes Mark jump a little in his skin.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 16
Kudos: 116





	when the sun hits

**Author's Note:**

> hi hi sorry for the reupload : this is a rewrite of a txt fic i did that is a rewrite of a nohyuck fic i wrote a while ago . BEAR WITH ME!!! I've missed markhyuck a little and this satisfied my mh heart<3
> 
> title is from .. when the sun hits! :D by slowdive

Mark falls in late spring. It’s a month of mawkish moss swamps and linen tablecloths. It’s a month of Donghyuck's shoulders and fog haunting at Mark's windows.

The air is cloying with sweet rot. Tender petals fall from trees and decay into the marshy grass underfoot and Mark finds himself lost in apple orchards and final exam preparations.

Donghyuck is elusive in this season. He’s never been an even push and pull of return and fly away but Mark only now catches him in glimpses. He’s a foamy shadow at the edge of the forest, the snatch of a yellow hood around the corner at school, he’s bruised up under his eyes in the second floor boy’s bathroom.

Mark counts these sightings with quarters in his pockets. It’s been $2.50 since he’s last had a real conversation with Donghyuck. 

The last time had been when Donghyuck announced that he was no longer going to church. He’d stood nearly nose to nose with Mark and Mark had been fixated on the scuffed tips of Donghyuck's taped chuck taylors.

“I think i’m a sinner, Mark. The permanent kind anyways. Pastor says that boys like me shouldn’t bother with godly folk, so I think that I won’t.”

Mark didn’t say anything to that.

“Are you going to say anything?”

Mark didn’t.

“You won’t.”

And then Donghyuck was off with a quickness. Off with his battered shoes and yellow hoodie and his mouth that had kissed Choi Chanhee behind the youth center last Sunday.

Mark felt bad for not saying anything. For not asking Donghyuck to stay. For not doing anything. For never doing Anything. But what could he say? Hey Hyuck, sorry that I’m not replying to you! It’s just that I’ve been thinking about Jung Jaehyun’s dick since that day in basketball last year and have spent every other night secretly praying into my pillow for God to make me straight. I’ll get back to you on this later! So reasonably so, he shuts his trap and let’s Donghyuck hurtle away from him at the speed of light. Like a fucking comet.

/

Tuesdays are sort of reserved for sitting in Mark's car outside his family’s funeral parlor with Renjun and Jeno. It’s an accidental tradition formed by Jeno's shit skills at algebra and Renjun's infamous bad health, and Mark's possession of-- a car. Renjun fills out Jeno's algebra homework while Jeno pencils crude drawings into the margins and Mark enjoys the presence of being around people his age and not being called downstairs for the afternoon to assist in embalming. Fuck embalming. 

It’s not that bad a place to hang out, Mark's car. Jeno jokes that he’s lucky his family let him get an actual car instead of recycling one of the old hearses. Mark doesn’t tell them that he was damn close to having to do that very thing before his older sister stepped in and asked for it instead. Mina’s sort of goth, he thinks, or whatever it's called when you wear that much black lipstick and request a hearse for your 19th birthday.

Point is, it’s a good fucking car. 2009 Toyota Corolla, silver.

There’s a sticker on the steering wheel slapped there by Jeno, one he snagged from the front desk, it reads CHRISTLOVE FUNERAL HOME, or it used to anyways. It’s been long since scratched off by the back of Mark's thumbnail until it's peeled away to spell out “FUN HOME” in a font that only funeral homes seem to use, like, garamond, but somehow less offending. 

Tuesday is the first time he’s seen Donghyuck since the incident. The incident being the day that Mark couldn’t open his mouth, jaw wired closed with stupidity and sheer willpower to ruin his own life.

He’s kneeling in the dirt in front of some old gravestone, one of the ones that Mark didn’t memorize yet on account of the engraving having eroded away before he was even born.

“Do you think he ever washes that uniform?” Renjun asks rudely, not taking his gaze off of the figure in the difference. 

“Don’t be a dick,” Jeno chides, “He’s probably like, in mourning right now.” 

“I kind of like it,” Mark admits. “It’s cool, like he rolled down a hill or something, in a cool way obviously.”

Jeno nods appreciatively while Renjun's nose wrinkles. 

“Well excuse me for liking my men _clean_.”

Jeno raises his eyebrows. “You like men?”

Mark's forehead comes down onto the steering wheel in an abrupt laugh that causes the horn to go off, scaring several funeral goers.

/

Sometimes he doesn’t see Donghyuck for weeks at a time, he gets elusive like that. Sometimes Mark will wake up before the sun has shown her ugly face and stare out over the marshy knolls in the backyard wondering when Jeno will walk out of the fog with his sad little school uniform and his black eye. 

School gets boring, there’s this kind of monotony to it. A litany of papers and exams broken up by showers of Renjun and Jeno's secret smoke breaks. 

There’s this sort of hunger in Mark's chest that gets painful when he thinks about it too hard. The lack of knowing, the not knowing, where Donghyuck is, if he’s coming back, if he’s okay. It makes it hard to breathe sometimes. It’s almost too easy to bat away though. There’s an ease to the practice of pretending that Donghyuck doesn't leave a gaping hole where Mark's lungs should be. 

He probably should have gotten his number or email or something.

/

He’s used to Donghyuck next to him. He likes it even. He likes the way that Donghyuck is always looming dangerously close, the way his hot breath fans over Mark's neck, whispering obscenities during church. He likes how ice cream smears messily over the corner of Donghyuck's mouth, and the sticky drool that seeps into Mark's shoulder on movie nights. He likes Donghyuck's endearingly crooked pinky and how he wears his socks. He likes that Donghyuck keeps him on his toes.

What he doesn’t like is the way that Eric Sohn passes by his living room window on Saturday afternoon, buttoned to the chin in his boy scout attire and Donghyuck isn’t there with Mark to snicker at him. Donghyuck isn’t there to choke out, “scoutfit,” as if it’s the funniest damn thing he’s ever heard, with his laugh condensed into his open palm. What he doesn’t like is that when he’s on his morning run, Donghyuck is standing in the middle of the school baseball field, blood on his cleats and dirt rubbed into the front of his uniform. He doesn’t look at Mark but slams his baseball bat into the home plate until dust mixes with the fog and Mark can’t see him anymore.

  
  


When he’s walking home on Wednesday afternoon, Mark tucks his thumb into his cheek and wonders faintly what Donghyuck is doing right now. He wonders if he’s with Choi Chanhee again. Or rather if that’d been a one time thing. Something you only ruin your life with once.

  
  


/

When Donghyuck does come back it’s like nothing has changed. He’s still sulky, still wet, and still purple around the eye. 

“Hey,” he says, like he hasn’t been M.I.A for the past month, handing a cigarette out for Mark to grab between this fingers. 

“Hey yourself,” Mark says because he can handle this normal they’ve created between them. Their routine. 

They’re quiet except for the bit of coughing Donghyuck does when he sucks in too long. Eventually he asks, “What’s with the suit?”

Mark laughs, short, and lights the cigarette again, “What’s with the hat?” He fires back. It’s one of those hats you wear on fishing trips that are really just forced attempts at bonding with male role models.

There’s a second where Mark wonders if Donghyuck's ever seen a dead person. He also thinks that something bad must have happened to Donghyuck, something really bad for him to turn out like this. Like, an eternal black eye and the constant smattering of rainfall on his school uniform, like he’d been drowned before breakfast. 

Donghyuck smiles dryly, “This is a killing people hat, I wear it and I kill people.”

Mark accepts that with a nod then looks down at himself. “Funeral after school, my parents want me to help with the service.”

Donghyuck eyes him wearily, “What for?”

“Guess my family wants me to follow in their footsteps,” He taps the ash off onto the pavement and licks his lips, mouth tasting like smoke and cold air. “Helping folks out in hard times you know? Setting up a nice funeral and all that shit.”

Donghyuck mutters something that sounds a lot like _that’s bullshit_ and Mark looks up at him, “Don’t you? Want a nice funeral?”

Donghyuck keeps looking down at a wilted clump of wildflowers, he takes a long drag before passing it back to Mark, then says, “When you’re dead they doll you up, you know? If I was dead I’d hope someone would roll me into the river or something instead. I’d rather that than anything else people come up with. People coming up on a sunday afternoon to talk about how sad it is and then put dead flowers over your hands like that helps. How come they do that? Who needs flowers when you’re already dead? Nobody.”

Mark doesn’t say anything the whole good long while that Donghyuck talks because he’s pretty sure that’s a new record for consecutive sentences spoken by Donghyuck and he wants to hold his breath until the end of it. 

  
  


/ 

Renjun is in the hospital again, his heart is acting funny, it’s probably the weather Renjun told them, strapped to his white sheets and stuck like a push pin with random monitors. So Liu Yangyang is their new lab partner. When he asks where Renjun is Jeno says, “He’s in the hospital again for his heart.” Then, “probably because of the weather.”

“God you’re all fucked up,” Yangyang laughs in this morbid way then pauses to add in, “Except for you, Jeno.” Yes, Mark thinks, god bless the Lee family and their creation of a completely average in every way possible, baby boy.

“Hey!” Jeno whines, “I have dyslexia,” which is hardly heard through his pout. Mark lends him a consolidary pat on the shoulder anyways. “There, there, Jen, You can’t help being perfect.”

Jeno nods appreciatively.

  
  


/

He sees Donghyuck again that afternoon, when the sun is fighting tooth and nail to shine a little through the cemetery fog. Something about cemetery fog, it’s real permanent stuff, it’s probably because of all the dead people. 

It’s hard to see Donghyuck almost, but he’s there anyhow, soppy uniform and everything. They don’t really talk much but stand shoulder to shoulder in front of that gravestone Donghyuck's always kneeling at. 

Mark kind of wants to talk, to ask who it belonged to but there’s this invisible hand around his throat. Probably inhaled too much cemetery fog, real permanent stuff.

But when he looks over at Donghyuck the other boy is already looking right back. He looks a little like those kicked puppies in animal shelter advertisements and it makes Mark want to stop being such a pussy and reach out and touch him. He blinks and Donghyuck gets sorta closer. It makes Mark jump a little in his skin. 

He swallows down whole gulps of cemetery fog and asks as quiet as he can, “Yeah?”

Donghyuck is so so close when he breathes out in this way that makes it sound like his lungs are endless, his skinny chest heaving. “You are so, so beautiful.” 

Mark stares at him then, really stares at him, swallows, then, stares some more. He’s overwhelmed with this feeling like Donghyuck can hear how fast his little field mouse heart is beating. Like he knows. 

Then a car alarm goes off somewhere in the fog and the moment is broken. Mark whips around to find the noise. When he turns back there’s nobody but himself in the mist, the ghost of warm breath against his bottom lip. 

/

That night Mark takes his bible off of his bedside table and shoves it underneath his mattress.

  
  


/

  
  


He knows that Donghyuck has been getting into some sort of trouble. The kind of trouble that keeps him from coming home on Thursday night. 

He knows because the police show up at his house to ask questions because of whatever school Donghyuck attends keeps tabs on stuff like that. Questions like _did you know your friend well?_ And _do you think he’s the type to run away?_ And d _o you think he could have killed himself?_

When Mark gets into bed that night he’s shivering. He’s a coward and he’s cold. 

  
  


/

  
  


When Mark wakes up, it's to the faint ticking of his bedside clock, the one shaped like a cat that Jeno gave him for their last secret santa. The air is buzzing with something. Like a countdown. He’s waiting for someone to snap their fingers and the world to start. 

Mark has woken to this noise four times in his life. Once when Donghyuck broke some girl’s in the eight grade on accident and ran away. Second when Donghyuck came to crawl into Mark's bed after his father left home. Third when his father came back. And Fourth, last week when he came to tell Mark about how the reverend found him sucking faces with Choi Chanhee.

Mark nearly falls out of bed at the sound of knocks nettling at his bedroom window. He almost falls again when he sees a face nearly pressed against the glass.

Donghyuck looks… Well he looks, bad . There’s a blood stain from his temple, curved down to the edge of his jaw and his eyes are more droopy than usual. He looks grey. It’s something to see Donghyuck bleed. Some far away part of Renjun has forgone the entertainment of such a possibility. The possibility that Donghyuck isn’t some phantasmagoric funeral parlor fantasy but a Hyuc-shaped bag of bones and blood.

Mark scrambles to the window seal, heart in his throat.

The window swings in when Mark flips the latch and Donghyuck climbs over the ledge wordlessly. Mark can smell the fog on Donghyuck's skin and he can tell that Donghyuck's shirt is filthy. There’s mud and red caked to his shirtfront and Mark feels lightheaded.

“What happened?” Mark asks, stupidly. He already knows. He knew what was going to happen and he didn’t stop it.

“She was going to lock me up.” Is all that Donghyuck says before slipping his shirt off and over his head.

Mark is so lost.

“Hyuck, what? Where have you been. Do you have any idea how worried I was? Where have you been for the past week.” He means to sound accusing, to sound like he has any place to tell Donghyuck what for.

Donghyuck doesn’t answer him, instead he fishes around for a shirt from Mark's closet. He’s rifling through the mess and tangle of high school boy chaos when he twists his torso and Mark sees it. Awful green-blue bruises painted into Donghyuck's ribs like a disturbing artwork. 

“Hyuck,” Mark sighs, caving in.

Donghyuck doesn’t stop his search, his wrists are trembling, his nonchalance is cracking and Mark latches onto that. Cruelly, he does, but he needs it. A fissure to break through, a narrow crack to strike Donghyuck's heart true and tender.

“Donghyuck. ”

Mark tilts his head to the side in exasperation, stepping forward and clutching onto Donghyuck's wrist, pulling him away from the closet.

“Stay here,” He tells him. “I’m going to run you a bath.” 

Donghyuck looks cornered, terrified. His face doesn’t say much but his eyes are on Fire and it scares something in Mark bad.

His hand digs into Mark's forearm. It hurts but Mark can’t find it in himself to tell him so.

“You can come with me.” He offers. “It’s just a bath.”

Donghyuck's eyes seem to clear up at that. “I don’t need to follow you, stupid.”

He lets go of Mark's arm though. Mark lingers for a second but just accepts it and turns to enter his bathroom. Donghyuck follows.

Donghyuck makes himself comfortable on the counter top, swinging his socked feet while Mark sits on his knees at the bathtub. He’s used to running baths for his mom’s nerves and he figures that manic homosexual and distressed middle age women’s tastes probably run parallel.

He’s right, because after Donghyuck gets over the hurdle of slipping out of his pants, leaving his boxers on, (not that Mark's complaining, he really doesn’t need to be dealing with that right now) he sighs openly and sinks down into the water with a contented noise until the water kisses the swell of his bottom lip.

The way his hair falls over his brow, sweet and precarious makes Mark ache with guilt. His Donghyuck is so precious in his true form, precious enough to protect. Mark failed there, he was too scared to protect what he had, and now he’s picking up the pieces.

“What-” he tries, feeling odd and exposed. “What did you mean about being locked up?”

Donghyuck doesn’t answer right away. He never does. He takes his sweet time soaking up the lavender mist and dragging his thumb down the condensation on the shower wall.

“Nothing,” He says with his mouth all in the way and it comes out more like _nuffin_.

“How’d you get this then?” Mark asks, voice softer now, riper. He gestures towards Donghyuck's ribs.

“Got into a fight with a bear.” He answers stolidly. His brow is creased and his lips are pulled into an impish pout.

“Hyuck.” Mark tries, he sounds so hopeless to his own ears.

_You should see the other guy_ is all that Mark gets before Donghyuck sinks down fully into the water, submerging his face fully.

He wants to hate Donghyuck. He wants to hate the way he leaves Mark hanging. He wants to hate him for kissing Chanhee before he’s kissed Mark. And he thinks he does, hate him that is. He hates him in a way that only makes everything else so much more unbearable because when he thinks about the feeling, he doesn’t Hate Donghyuck at all. Not really.

He’s drowning in Donghyuck, actually. He’s lost in him, tied up in him. Part of Mark's soul will always linger in the back pew with Donghyuck mumbling curse words under the roof of the Lord. Even if Donghyuck kissed Chanhee instead of Mark, and even if he runs away from home, and even if he disappears when Mark can’t find it in himself to choke out the words. He loves Donghyuck. 

Hyuck: 1

Mark: 0

He’s snapped out of his thoughts when Donghyuck reappears from the water, hand on his cheek, like there’s something hurting him there.

“What’s wrong?”

Donghyuck bites down on his bottom lip definitely before sinking a little lower and opens his mouth again.

“My tooth.”

He slaps the water childishly, satisfied with the way it sloshes over the tub and soaks into Mark's knees.

“Hurts,” And the cadence of his voice shakes some of the cold out of Mark's lungs. The steam from the bath rises and clings to Mark's nape. “It’s too sharp.”

Dusty tears cling to the brush of Donghyuck's lashes. There’s a double meaning there, Mark knows there is. The steam condenses over Mark's brow and he feels cornered. His heart is palpitating in a vicious contemplation, something like Stockholm syndrome. Donghyuck has him trapped.

Mark finds the orajel on the second shelf behind his older brother’s condoms. The ones he stole from Doyoung in the sixth grade to prove to Donghyuck that he was Too going through puberty. What exactly the condom proved, Mark isn’t sure. But the impressed look from thirteen year old Donghyuck was enough for him.

Donghyuck is watching Mark. He’s watching him in a way that makes Mark want to hide or squirm. He doesn’t understand Donghyuck, he doesn’t understand the why’s or the when’s that come with him

The gel comes out sticky on Mark's finger, and Donghyuck's stare coagulates between them. Everything feels thick and filmy.

Mark eyes Donghyuck's mouth suspiciously, wondering if Donghyuck would bite him. He has half a mind to whisper “nice puppy,” but he’s sure that’ll get him bitten quicker than his current plan. So he stays content with taking his opposite hand and bringing it up to Donghyuck's mouth.

It only takes a brush of his thumb for Donghyuck's lips to part open. Mark finds himself trapped in time for a second, suspended for a breath, eyes glued to rounded teeth and a pink tongue. Then he catches Donghyuck's eyes for a moment and he snaps out of it. The devil on Mark's shoulder cackles at Mark's senseless fumbling.

The inside of Donghyuck's mouth is warm, there’s the softness of the inside of his cheek and his teeth against Mark's forefinger.

He finds the tooth that hurts when Donghyuck whines, a muffled noise that makes odd shivering wings beat in Mark's chest. Half satisfaction from getting to take care of Donghyuck like this and half something deeply unnerving. 

Mark makes quick work of it, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with Donghyuck while massaging the gel into his gums. It feels like spring when Donghyuck breathes short and clipped over Mark's knuckles, his tongue petal-soft.

Avoiding Donghyuck's steady stare means averting his eyes downwards, which he learns is just as bad. Because then he’s looking at the mole that sits just below Donghyuck's faint adam’s apple and it’s magnetic. 

His breath hitches minutely and when Mark pulls away, a string of spit connects his hand to Donghyuck's mouth, he’s transfixed.

He isn’t expecting the way that Donghyuck lunges forward at him, snapping the string that connects them. Then there’s lips on his and Mark's heart is in his throat.

It’s damp and he can hear the sound of Donghyuck breathing against him, can feel his heartbeat in his lips. It’s ash soft against his mouth and Mark thinks that if he inhales he’ll choke.

Nonetheless when Donghyuck inhales against him it’s pleasant in a way that Mark's never experienced. It’s overwhelming and blooming, breezy.

Then Donghyuck's hands shoot out greedily, pulling Mark towards him. Their mouths are crushed together and the sound Mark makes is wracking. His hand slips and after a second he’s soaking, and he doesn’t care. His palm lands in between Donghyuck's knees, wrist cramped against the floor of the bath. Water laps against his shirt front and Donghyuck's tongue does something that draws a shattered noise from Mark's throat.

Then something breaks inside him and he wants more.

He begins the second kiss halfway over the tub and halfway in, and ends the kiss with his knees over on either side of Donghyuck's waist.

The ends of Donghyuck's hair stick against the back of his neck and forehead, disheveled under Mark's hands when the older boy takes a handful and presses him against the wall and holding him still.

“You’re so unfair,” Mark mouths against Donghyuck's neck. He smells like lavender and something fainter, like blood. So unfair.

Donghyuck's chest rises and falls rapidly gasping into the open air. It makes Mark a little braver. He feels like he’s finally caught up to Donghyuck, like he’s finally one step ahead. It makes him want more, he feels a little feral when he bites into Donghyuck's bare shoulder, hands flitting over his throat and jaw. His mouth is going numb from the gel but he keeps going anyways.

“ Mark,” Donghyuck wheezes, “Mark.”

Mark hums in response detaching himself from Donghyuck's skin to cup his face instead. He drags his thumb through the stream of blood on Donghyuck's temple. The tip of his nose is rosy and Mark has the urge to kiss it, so he does.

“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck says and Mark doesn’t have to ask what for. He leans in to peck Mark on the lips again, “I’m sorry.”

His words are peach sweet, lost in their kiss but Mark doesn’t mind. He understands.

/ 

Half the fun of having a ghost for a boyfriend is severely dampened by… having a ghost for a boyfriend. 

At least there’s that he doesn’t have to worry about wondering if he should get Donghyuck's email or anything anymore because he comes around a little more often now. Mark likes to think of this as a result of his good house-training more than anything else. He’s got him practically eating out of the palm of Mark's hand. 

“You sound weird,” Renjun tells him from the backseat, long legs cramped into a pretzel from how Jeno's pushed his own seat back to take a nap of questionable quality. 

Jeno snores in agreeance. 

“Also,” Renjun continues, because he loves to ruin a good thing, “Did he actually say you were boyfriends?”

Mark scoffs, opening his mouth, closing it, scoffing again, he-- doesn’t have an answer to that. He settles on, “Well he didn’t _not_ say we’re boyfriends.”

The fog outside presses its face up against the window greedily like it’s trying to eavesdrop on Mark's pain.

Then Jeno comes to life in the passenger seat, chest heaving and slams his palm against the radio. Renjun raises an eyebrow to which Jeno gasps, “they were playing the macarena.” 

“Who?” Renjun asks nonchalant, drawing faces into the condensation. 

“In my dream.”

Mark bites his thumb. Maybe Donghyuck will show up tomorrow.

/ 

  
  


Donghyuck doesn’t show up tomorrow, but the day after. 

The Back Space, a brick wall sanctitarium for a catalyst of teenage lung cancer and also the high school’s worst student parking lot. It’s also the only place Mark has managed to catch Donghyuck and he looks bad. Bloody from mouth to cheek, like he was hit in the mouth, hard, then hit again, then wiped the back of his hand through it. 

Mark pulls off his gloves by the tips of his fingers, eyes not moving from Donghyuck. 

“You’re bleeding,” he says obviously, stupidly. 

Donghyuck shrugs, shoulders curling in a little more than usual. Like weak paper held to flame. 

Mark reaches out, shaky like Donghyuck might still bite him. He doesn’t, and his cheek is cold in Mark's palm. The blood fills up the tiny spaces in his thumb print like one of those red rivers from nature documentaries.

“Did a bear do this too?”

Donghyuck shakes his head, then, “my mom is mean,” It’s like, the first honest thing that Donghyuck has really said. He says it in a way that sounds not wholly honest though, like he’s subbing words for what he really means but Mark gets the point. Some things are unspeakable. 

Mark sucks in a breath and pulls him closer. Donghyuck is a little too tall to properly baby anymore but he does his damndest. He presses his mouth to his forehead tightly and the way Donghyuck holds onto him makes him think this might be the first time he’s ever been kissed like that. His breath feels cold against Mark's collar. 

“Don’t go back,” he’s sort of begging. “You can stay with me forever, just don’t go back there again.”

There’s something else there too he’s trying to say something along the lines of, _I’m gonna protect you this time. I’m sorry I didn’t before._

Donghyuck is shaking apart in his arms like that. A little like a ghost, a little like a boy. 

_Don’t go back_ , he says again and again into Donghyuck's hair, holding him tighter.

And when the shaking comes to an end and the cabinets stop rattling there’s a bit of an open space in Mark's chest, like something got carved out. Something bad, like all the cemetery fog he’d inhaled up and left the atmosphere. Donghyuck looks up at him with those doll eyes, patient like porcelain, the cracks starting to piece back together. 

And that’s when Mark notices Donghyuck's gone warm, gone dry. The little perpetual shadow around his eye is lifted like someone had gone and breathed the life back into him. Like sand in a play doll. 

He sounds a little deeper this time, like his voice is something you can cling onto, “yeah?” 

Mark blinks, then blinks again, then dimples at full tilt. “Yeah.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> aka the bimonthly return of nascar happens at 2 am !
> 
> for clarification: this is supposed to be magical realism where hyuck is a ghost who had a really bad relationship w his mom who is also dead >:T however while she's a ghost, hyuck is only in limbo and mark is able to pull him back into the living world with lots of sweet loving <3
> 
> \+ 3 cheers for jeno! now goodbye<3
> 
> kudos & comments are appreciated


End file.
